The Whiteboard
by tmthesaurus
Summary: Amy has the best plan to cure her insomnia.
1. Chapter 1

3,514. That's the number of patients admitted to Brockton Bay Medical Center in 2008. In 2009, that number had almost quadrupled. By 2011, Brockton Bay had become a hotbed for medical tourism, with tens of thousands visiting the small New Hampshire city hoping for a miracle. The rapid growth could be traced back to the day Amy Dallon triggered.

Every day, Amy toured the hospitals and clinics of Brockton Bay, trying to hold back the seemingly endless horde of sick and injured. In between her volunteer hours and school, she had barely enough time to feel the crippling guilt over how few hours she actually worked. Luckily, she was a skilled multitasker.

Today, after nearly two years of making herself sick through overwork, guilt, and depression, Amy Dallon was just tired. So why the fuck couldn't she get to sleep? She had an appointment with the Sandman, damn it. She had done her part by lying down and closing her eyes. Why wasn't he doing his?

She was in her secret room. Well, it was less secret room, and more disused study room in a basement of the Brockton Bay Public Library, but she had never seen anybody else on the floor, let alone in the room, so that was enough. She came here whenever she was too tired to properly function and didn't have the energy to deal with Carol.

The room had an overstuffed couch. She had no idea why it was down here, but she certainly wasn't going to complain. That couch had been a good friend to her, offering a judgment free resting place on more occasions than she cared to remember. Today, however, not even that was enough to deliver her into the Land of Nod.

As she tried to make herself sleep through sheer force of will, Amy was struck by a brilliant idea. It could have been her sleep-deprivation talking, but right now, "brilliant" seemed the perfect adjective. If counting imaginary sheep were supposed to cure insomnia, then drawing sheep would be like flooding her body with melatonin. She dragged herself to the whiteboard on the opposite wall and, using the markers provided, drew a sheep jumping a fence, followed by a line of sheep waiting their turn. At least, that's what she attempted to draw. Now that she had returned to her vantage point on the couch, it looked more like a series of clouds with sticks attached. Oh, well. She did the best she could.

Ten minutes later, and no less awake than before, Amy reconsidered her plan. She was still utterly convinced of its merits. No, she had been let down by the tools provided by the Brockton Bay Public Library. The markers were probably purchased by some faceless bureaucrat during the 80s. The economy had taken a downturn since then, and extravagances like markers had probably fallen by the wayside. They had been sitting in here for decades, slowing being drained of their potency. Now, they lacked even the ability to put an exhausted 17-year-old to sleep. If that didn't tell you all you needed to know about Brockton Bay, she didn't know what would. Amy's last thoughts before her body finally listened to her demands were of a warehouse filled with countless rows of markers.

###

Amy was flabbergasted. On the whiteboard in her secret room, somebody had drawn a mighty dragon swooping in, its claws wrapped around the sheep-cloud mid-leap.

Two things were immediately obvious: one, her secret room was significantly less secret than previous reports had indicated, and two, the intruder was clearly challenging her. Coming into her secret room—she should probably think of a new name—and getting their dragon to steal her sheep-cloud? Countries had gone to _war_ for less.

She pulled out her newly purchased marker and waved it around like a sword. She imagined herself as a gallant knight—an actual one, not some cheap tin knockoff who probably kidnapped the beautiful princess—fighting the fierce dragon. She drew the scene as she imagined it: she and her noble steed as they charged the beast, prepared to die to protect all that was good and decent in the world, with goodness and decency being represented by her sheep-cloud.

When she came in the next day and saw that the dragon and sheep-clouds had been erased and a windmill drawn in their stead, she didn't know to think. Instead of bothering to try—this was, after all, supposed to be her secret naptime room, not a competitive drawing space—Amy wrote "windmill?" on the whiteboard.

She returned every day and found no change to the whiteboard. After three days, she was beginning to suspect that whoever had been leaving these drawings for her had moved on. Then, on the fourth day, she received a reply: an arrow pointing down. Beneath the whiteboard was a copy of _Don Quixote_. She took the book to the couch and set forth on a journey to 17th Century Spain.

When she finally managed to drag herself away from the room, she left another message for her mysterious companion: "Is this your way of telling me you like my ass?"


	2. Chapter 2

There was no doubt about it: Camus was absolutely bonkers. That was the only explanation for her latest picture, a crocodile riding a toucan. Amy had no earthly idea what the hell it was supposed to signify, but it was clearly the product of a mind broken beyond repair.

It had been a little over two months since Amy's interloping interlocutor had stolen into the secret room and vandalized her masterpiece, and in that time, the two had become fast friends. This was somewhat surprising given their unspoken agreement to communicate almost entirely via the medium of whiteboard doodles, but Camus had a knack for conveying her thoughts via simple images. Of course, that was before she went insane.

The more Amy thought about it, the less certain she became. After all, since when did insane people go to the library? Maybe it was a test? Maybe the picture really was as nonsensical as it appeared to be, and she wanted to see how Amy would respond. That made sense. Of course, it meant that her only friend was a total paranoiac, but that was better than being crazy. She knew how to deal with paranoia.

###

Amy treasured her friendship with Camus. No words meant no real names, which meant she could be anyone or at least anyone who spent all their free time in the library. Amy wanted desperately to be anybody but herself, so this worked out to be good enough for most days. Unfortunately, today was not like most days.

In the month since the crocodile incident, Amy had come under increased pressure from Carol—apparently, librarians couldn't be heroes. Amy couldn't see why librarians were so different from lawyers and made the mistake of voicing her confusion. This had resulted in her inability to spare the time for her visits to the library. It had been almost a week since her last trip to the secret room, and the messages from Camus were really piling up. Amy erased the latest, an hourglass with an almost empty upper globe, and pondered what she was going to say. What she could say.

Amy needed to talk to somebody. If she didn't vent soon, she was liable to explode. Unfortunately, she had nobody she could go to. Vicky was great but couldn't really understand what it was like not to know if her parents loved her. Of course, they loved her. Who wouldn't? Camus was also out since she needed to say more than the limits of the relationship would allow. Amy sighed and drew the only thing she could think of: a woman's face with a conspicuously blank space where her mouth ought to have been.

When she returned the next day, she found a cheap notebook taped beneath a reasonable facsimile of _The Scream_.


End file.
